


eduardo comes out

by daisyridley



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Fix-It, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyridley/pseuds/daisyridley
Summary: title's pretty self explanatory





	eduardo comes out

**Author's Note:**

> aaron sorkin wants what I have

“I’m Sean Parker.”

“Oh, he’s wired in,” Mark explains when the intern does nothing to acknowledge Sean’s introduction, and Sean lights up.

“That’s what I’m talking about. Where’s Eduardo?” he asks then, looking around as if he expected Eduardo to pop out of a sofa, but not really - more than anything it’s like he’s acting as if he didn’t know the answer just for the theatrical impact of spinning around and asking subtextually loaded questions.

“He got an… internship. In New York,” Mark says, and there’s defeat written all over his face when he speaks.

“Eduardo didn’t come out,” Sean says, not the least bit surprised that Eduardo didn’t actually pop out of a sofa, and Mark, maybe for the first time in his life, is so ashamed that he needs to look away.

 

Eduardo does come to California, but it’s many weeks later, and many beers later, and many property damages later, and Eduardo has missed all of it. When Mark sees him, after he forgot to pick him up at the airport, he greets him with cheerfulness. But as he looks at him, and Eduardo tells him that he forgot to pick him up at the airport, it’s like someone inside his brain just plugged in an outlet he’d forgotten on the floor for too long and accidentally stepped on, twisting one of the contacts so that it doesn’t align very well anymore, and for a moment he sees the white hot sparkle of electricity in the socket.

“You gotta see some of the new stuff I got,” Mark says, bumping into the furniture in the hurry to bat that feeling away and get back to normal, to him and Wardo being on the same side. “Dustin, show him the Wall. I’m calling it the Wall.”

And then Sean opens his mouth again, and Eduardo gets snappy, and Mark gets snappy, too, and Eduardo looks like he's about three seconds from losing it but Mark knew they'd get there from the moment he saw him, because the contact didn’t realign itself magically as soon as he started talking. The weight of Eduardo’s stare is enough to make Mark drop his gaze, again.

“You wanna talk to me alone for a minute?” Eduardo asks.

“Sure.”

The corridor is smaller, darker and, somehow, scarier than the room where Sean was straight up antagonizing Eduardo, the girls were contributing to nothing with their squeals, and about five more people were listening to every word instead of coding.

“How’s it going?” Mark asks, trying to mentally delete everything that’s happened so far and saying the first thing that pops into his head, which is probably the wrong thing to say. “How’s the internship? How’s Christy?” He’s asking questions like he’s reading from a list, hoping that one of them will distract Eduardo from his anger.

It’s “how’s the internship” that does it, but it does it in that Eduardo stares at him dead cold and slams the door, and then he definitely, one hundred percent loses it.

“Mark. Jesus. I quit the internship. We talked about this on the phone, I—I quit on my first day.” Eduardo’s anger has turned into disbelief, and Mark does remember him saying that on the phone, so he tells him, and then, because he can’t help himself, he asks again,

“So how is Christy?”

Eduardo sighs. “That’s why I came out here, I… I had to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Mark says, because he actually wasn’t expecting that. He chews on the tip of his cherry candy and waits for Eduardo to go on.

“Mark,” Eduardo says, and it’s really very interesting how he’s almost trembling, now, and he’s looking at Mark for real, not just glaring at him, and the contacts finally realign. His Wardo is back. “I’m gay.”

Mark frowns. “That’s it?”

“You’re not surprised? Anything?”

“No,” Mark says with a shrug. He leans on the wall and takes another bite out of the cherry worm. “Haven’t you seen the way Andrew Garfield plays you?”

“Who?”

“What?”

“What did you just say?”

“I didn’t say anything. Must have been the wind.”

“We’re indoors.”

“So if you’re into guys does it mean you’re also into me?”

Wardo gets all worked up at that question. “What—what does that have anything to do with—”

“So you are into me. Good.”

And, all of a sudden, Wardo’s restlessness drops from his body like a water balloon falling on the ground, and he looks at Mark with blown-out eyes. “Good?”

“You’re telling me you came out all the way to California to tell me you like men and you’re not happy that I’m happy about that.”

“You’re—?” Wardo begins to ask, pointing at Mark with a half-raised finger, and then he decides to stop talking altogether.

 

“Wow,” Mark says when they’re done and he drops on the mattress next to Wardo.

“Yeah,” Wardo exhales. He’s smiling.

“It’s good that you’re gay,” Mark says. “Because I was starting to feel like you didn’t actually care about the future of Facebook and by proxy about me and you not coming to California was just the beginning of a long but inexorable process that would end up with you being left out of the company but you suck dick too well for that to happen.”

“Lot to unpack there, Mark,” Wardo says.

“Yeah.”

There’s a mini fridge under the nightstand and Wardo stretches out of the bed enough to get two cans of beer out of it. He passes one to Mark and raises his.

“To coming out, then.”

“To coming out.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> and that's what aaron sorkin would have written if he weren't a coward


End file.
